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And the parts about not installing bases of operation for military purposes, and all that shit, is what, chopped liver? the intent of the treaty is very fucking clear, and the "Not a weapon of mass destruction! *raspberry*" loophole you seem so enamored by, is exactly why there was a followup resolution in 2005, which the US of course, vetoed.

You are welcome to check that out. It outright forbid *all* space based weapons.

https://www.nti.org/learn/trea...

and we even attempted to pass legislation on this--- MANY TIMES-- but warmongering asshats like the GP get butthurt over such things immediately, so we have never actually passed it.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/...

https://www.congress.gov/bill/...

https://www.congress.gov/bill/...

Because we just *GOTTA* fucking have space lasers. /s

Very few people like war, including the dropping bombs part. You don't seem to have a useful understanding of the conflicts involving either Iraq or Libya. North Korea has been pursuing nuclear technology for weapons since the 1950s. Your views are not to be trusted.

1950s to 1960s: Early Developments

In the early 1950s, North Korea began developing the institutional capability to train personnel for its nuclear program. In December 1952, the government established the Atomic Energy Research Institute and the Academy of Sciences, but nuclear work only began to progress when North Korea established cooperative agreements with the Soviet Union. [2] Pyongyang signed the founding charter of the Soviet Union's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in February 1956, and began to send scientists and technicians to the USSR for training shortly thereafter. In 1959, North Korea and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy that included a provision for Soviet help to establish a nuclear research complex in Yongbyon, North Pyongan Province. [3]

In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union provided extensive technical assistance to North Korea in constructing the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center, which included the installation of a Soviet IRT-2000 nuclear research reactor and associated facilities. North Korea used this small research reactor to produce radioisotopes and to train personnel. [4] Although the cabinet and the Academy of Sciences were given operational and administrative oversight of the nuclear facilities, then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung retained ultimate control of the nuclear program and all decisions associated with weapons development.

. . . Reportedly, Kim Il Sung asked Beijing to share its nuclear weapons technology following China's first nuclear test in October 1964, but Chinese leader Mao Zedong refused. [5] In any case, shortly thereafter, North Korean relations with China began to deteriorate.

Oh yeah, that has Iraq and Libya written all over it!

I'm battling to understand what your point is. Don't get me wrong - I'm not being facetious, I'd really rather like to know what point you were trying to make with that snippet because to me it it is so neutral that I cannot tell if you are *for* NK having nukes, *against* NK having nukes, or ambivalent about NK having nukes.

Very few people like war, including the dropping bombs part. You don't seem to have a useful understanding of the conflicts involving either Iraq or Libya. North Korea has been pursuing nuclear technology for weapons since the 1950s. Your views are not to be trusted.

1950s to 1960s: Early Developments

In the early 1950s, North Korea began developing the institutional capability to train personnel for its nuclear program. In December 1952, the government established the Atomic Energy Research Institute and the Academy of Sciences, but nuclear work only began to progress when North Korea established cooperative agreements with the Soviet Union. [2] Pyongyang signed the founding charter of the Soviet Union's Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in February 1956, and began to send scientists and technicians to the USSR for training shortly thereafter. In 1959, North Korea and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy that included a provision for Soviet help to establish a nuclear research complex in Yongbyon, North Pyongan Province. [3]

In the early 1960s, the Soviet Union provided extensive technical assistance to North Korea in constructing the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center, which included the installation of a Soviet IRT-2000 nuclear research reactor and associated facilities. North Korea used this small research reactor to produce radioisotopes and to train personnel. [4] Although the cabinet and the Academy of Sciences were given operational and administrative oversight of the nuclear facilities, then-North Korean leader Kim Il Sung retained ultimate control of the nuclear program and all decisions associated with weapons development.

. . . Reportedly, Kim Il Sung asked Beijing to share its nuclear weapons technology following China's first nuclear test in October 1964, but Chinese leader Mao Zedong refused. [5] In any case, shortly thereafter, North Korean relations with China began to deteriorate.

Oh yeah, that has Iraq and Libya written all over it!

No ass-hole, it is censorship and Google and Facebook are not meant to think for you. It's called Critical Thinking. Develop it sometime. History lesson: New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN all promoted the Weapons of Mass Destruction lie of the Bush Administration that led us into war with Iraq. So no they did not reported the news that actually happened.

It would indeed be interesting if the internet was as prevalent back then as it is now. How Google, Facebook might have influenced the disinformation disseminated to start the Bush/Chaney war is something very hard to quantify. It might have been much harder for Chaney to create the lies in the first place. Instead all the media outlets were "leaked" the reports created by the CIA and all of their sources confirmed it so they went with the stories as accurate. The Dick Chaney machine did one hell of a job on the entire chain of information and managed to create a lie that quickly became what seemed to be absolutely solid intelligence. You will notice that what occurred as a direct result of the lie created for Bush by the Chaney machine is that Colin Powellbecame the scape goat and George Bush and Chaney got off smelling like a roses in a shithouse.

Colin Powell essentially took the brunt of the blame when he believed the lies and acted on the falsehood on behalf of the government. If it was not for what Chaney and Bush did to Colin Powell you might very well have a united Republican party and a very popular black Republican president who would get things done unlike the useless, xenophobic, great wall building asshole who is in office now!

Uhhh, GPS chips are required by law to disable for altitudes and velocities common for missiles.

GPS receivers and accelerometers are two different things. Many cellphones have both.

Also most steering of an ICBM occurs during the boost phase.

Or maybe NK will disregard the law requiring them to disable the chip, since they have their own fabs.

America give 4B in free arms to Egypt, 5-6B to Israel and 2B to Jordan. They wouldnt buy PAtriots if they were not free as they have their own Missile programs.

They wouldn't buy Patriots, you say?

So why did Egypt pay $1.3B for the Patriot missiles they purchased?
Source: http://www.nti.org/learn/count...

Or why did Israel take part in a purchase order with Kuwait, Taiwan, and Spain to purchase $12.5B in Patriot missiles?
Source: https://sputniknews.com/milita...

In fact, for a system you say that no one would buy, there seem to be an awful lot of countries lining up to pay for it...
- UAE - $3.3B
- Qatar - $2.4B
- Saudi Arabia - $1.75B
- Greece - $1.1B
- Japan - $1B

There were more countries and more links, but I'll stop there, since I think I've made my point.

• Rare. The isotopes whose properties match the use criteria are mostly generated in breeder reactors or reactors specialized for generating medical isotopes, or as a byproduct of weapons grade plutonium production.
• Expensive. Due to protests over their use, any launch with a RTG aboard undergoes extra scrutiny and requires additional studies before approval. You also need to have extra security to protect the launch site and payload from protesters.
• Produce energy in the form of heat. This is good far from the sun where you need heat to keep your electronics from freezing. But closer to the sun you have the opposite problem, and you have to work hard to expel heat from the satellite. So closer to the sun, an energy source not based on heat is preferable.
• Dangerous. I don't mean they'll burn up on re-entry and spread plutonium all over the atmosphere. The canisters which contain the radioactive materials have demonstrated they will survive re-entry intact in the event of a launch mishap or satellite de-orbit. The problem is after they re-enter, they're a powerful radioactive source in a cannister lost in some random location where anyone could potentially find it. That is not a good combination. Responsible use of RTGs near the Earth means doing a controlled de-orbit of the satellite (not always possible) so RTG lands in the deep ocean, or conducting an expensive search and recovery operation afterwards to find the RTG before thieves do.

Save the RTGs for the deep-space missions. There's plenty of solar energy in Earth orbit to power satellites (solar flux is nearly 2x what it is on the Earth's surface without an atmosphere to scatter and absorb sunlight, and the high launch costs mean you can afford the expensive high-efficiency panels). Batteries (to power the satellite during the 45 minutes it's in the Earth's shadow) can operate for a decade or more, which is about the time you start thinking of replacing the satellite anyway due to its technology being outdated.

The Nuclear Threat Initiative.

This year's challenge (detailed below) is a real-world problem in nuclear verification, sponsored by and designed in partnership with the Nuclear Threat Initiative (http://www.nti.org/), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to reduce the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

Citation on the mines causing radioactive contamination?

Ask and ye shall receive. http://www.nti.org/analysis/ar...

http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/...

http://toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/tex...

http://cumulis.epa.gov/supercp...

http://thestarphoenix.com/busi...

http://masecoalition.org/navaj...

http://worstpolluted.org/proje...

http://technology.infomine.com...

http://www.sciencedirect.com/s...

http://forgottennavajopeople.o...

http://www.sric.org/uranium/do...

https://www.researchgate.net/p...

http://nuclear-news.net/2011/0...

http://thestarphoenix.com/busi...

Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are signatories in the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). So, it would be very unlikely that either would start developing nuclear weapons now.

The general consensus is that it was a stupid move to sign for that while Israel, a neighbor and foe, did not sign the same terms.

Both Egypt and Saudi Arabia are signatories in the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). So, it would be very unlikely that either would start developing nuclear weapons now.

The general consensus is that it was a stupid move to sign for that while Israel, a neighbor and foe, did not sign the same terms.

It looks to me like you've got that completely wrong, not the least of which is the strategic weapons Ukraine had were developed by the Soviet Union of which both Russia and Ukraine were a part. As to the rest ...

Half of Ukraine's electricity is from nuclear power. That have 13 reactors now, and plan to add 11 more. Access to enriched nuclear materials isn't likely to be much of a problem.

Ukraine's strange love for nuclear power

Missile

Ukraine is capable of producing advanced intercontinental range ballistic missiles, and its missile industry is second only to Russia's among the former Soviet republics. The linchpin of this industry is the former Yuzhnoye Scientific Production Association, arguably the preeminent intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) design and production facility in the Former Soviet Union, whose capabilities are matched only by a handful of U.S. and Russian missile enterprises.

Half of Ukraine's electricity is from nuclear power. That have 13 reactors now, and plan to add 11 more.

Ukraine's strange love for nuclear power

Missile

Ukraine is capable of producing advanced intercontinental range ballistic missiles, and its missile industry is second only to Russia's among the former Soviet republics. The linchpin of this industry is the former Yuzhnoye Scientific Production Association, arguably the preeminent intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) design and production facility in the Former Soviet Union, whose capabilities are matched only by a handful of U.S. and Russian missile enterprises.

Trust has very little to do with it. The people who have these weapons have them. The best that can be hoped for is a process of disarmament that does not cause too much damage if trust is broken, and one which prevents other parties from gaining the weapons and thus becoming risk factors in and of themselves.

A general perspective from Sen. Sam Nunn. The world requires more progress. I think people have become too complacent about these weapons.

China had, at last count, almost two thousand nuclear weapons and climbing.

Uhh, try 200-300. And they presently lack an effective delivery mechanism. They're testing one now. They are not a significant threat to the United States at this time. Russia is.

Egypt was in with the Germans and the Soviets regarding chemical and biological weapons back in the 1950s. Egypt kept developing them and teamed up with Syria later (UAR). Any CW-related technology coming from Syria came from that union with Egypt likely came from USSR. The most the US did in relation to the middle east and chemical weapons was train those countries in defending themselves from said weapons in the 1980s. It doesn't matter if Russia ends up with the Syrian weapons because they designed them in the first place! Though the Russians may turn around and sell them to someone else, I sort of doubt it this time. I think they have too much to lose.

It's called a "Threat Narrative". It's why there were no WMDs. There never was even suspicion of WMDs. There was only the need for a Threat Narrative to convince the people to let the armed forces off it's chain.

Vietnam? Threat Narrative. McCarthyism? Threat Narrative.... The Holocaust? Threat Narrative. Require Evidence before belief -- That's rational. Always disbelieve the Threat Narrative. Don't Fall For It, not even once.

A single, simple hand grenade is considered a WMD. I am sure that Iraq has some hand grenades, so the threat of WMD's is real.

Yep. This isn't the first time customs agents for various countries have "accidentally" stumbled across North Korean contraband. It's a no-brainer to conclude that US intelligence agencies are responsible.

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/japan-seizes-suspicious-north-korean-cargo-transit-myanmar/
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gQJd8FsHXjzf35GeBg4bV1JrRfHQ?docId=CNG.caf81bda72044be6c361e53dc743c2a8.3e1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8227991.stm

Just maintaining the nuclear arsenal accounts for around $18million a year currently and it's rising every year.

That's $18 billion a year, on average.

I don't know, this article puts the number at 9,000 at one site.

http://www.nti.org/gsn/article/iran-claims-3000-new-uranium-centrifuges/

google for the number of Iran centrifuges and you will find a host of articles claiming they doubles the amounts at different sites. I suspect they cannot all concentrate to the same levels so a complete run might make use of several of them for a final product.

Excuse me, who started it? That would be the Iranian government with their covert nuclear weapons program, and continuing threats against the Gulf states and other neighbors, Europe, the US, and Israel. Stuxnet was the blowback, these attacks are escalation. Stuxnet wouldn't have existed without the nuclear program - you'll notice it was apparently aimed at centrifuges, not at sewage treatment. The current attacks by Iran are just a part of their pattern.

Nuclear

The UN Security Council has passed multiple resolutions demanding that Iran halt its uranium enrichment activities. In 2009, concerns over Tehran's nuclear program increased when Iran revealed to the IAEA that it was constructing a second enrichment facility close to the city of Qom, now known as the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant. [7] In November 2011, tensions escalated further when the IAEA released a report with a 14-page annex outlining the "possible military dimensions" of Iran's nuclear program, though most activities described dated to the pre-2003 period. [8] While Iran questioned the evidence in the report and the IAEA's legal authority to investigate non-nuclear activities, the report provoked a series of new sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union.

UN chief to Iran: Prove nuclear program is peaceful, cease verbal attacks on Israel

UN chief Ban Ki-moon met Iran's president and supreme leader in Tehran on Wednesday and urged them to take concrete steps to prove the country's nuclear program is peaceful. He also called on all states to stop supplying arms to the conflict in Syria, Ban's spokesman, Martin Nesirky, said.

He told reporters in New York that in separate meetings with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the secretary-general further said that he considered their latest verbal attacks on Israel to be offensive, inflammatory and unacceptable. . . .

"On the nuclear question ... he said that he regretted that little tangible progress has been achieved so far," Nesirky, speaking by telephone from Tehran, told reporters in New York.

"He said that Iran needed to take concrete steps to address the concerns of the International Atomic Energy Agency and prove to the world that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes," Nesirky said.

STAKES ARE HIGH FOR EU DIPLOMACY IN IRANIAN NUCLEAR CRISIS

In the last six months, the enduring tension between the international community and the Islamic Republic of Iran over its nuclear program has escalated dangerously. Tension notched up last November with a report released by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA): the report by the UN nuclear watchdog marked a break with past findings by expressing in very stark terms, and through extensive documentation, its serious concern that Iran had previously pursued nuclear weapons work. . .

“ – The so-called E3, the U.K., France and Germany: All three are much more inclined than the U.S. to believe that Iran is seeking to weaponize its uranium stockpiles. They have more experience negotiating with Iran as well, and that experience has taught them not to allow Tehran any wiggle room. France in particular has been pushing for a hard line: a full and complete halt to Iran’s nuclear program and the surrender of all of its uranium. “Even if they agree to hand over their 20% enriched uranium, some in Europe will argue to keep up the pressure – to not take down any of the sanctions — until the

You must have missed the /. post about China's growing submarine fleet, like this one, or the news of their nuclear submarine programs on the Guardian and others, like this one. Or the news that they launched a new class of nuclear ballistic missile subs here, here, here, here, and here.

So, there is no threat to the East Coast, because China is so good about not selling things for profit to other nations, like Iran, Syria, Libya....

The estimated volume of Yellowstone eruption was 1000km^3 while Krakatoa eruption was 25km^3. If one consider that energy ~ volume, then Yellowstone is estimated to be 1Gigaton of TNT

For comparison, in circa October 2008 operational stockpile of US "contains the explosive equivalent of more than 91,500 Hiroshima-sized bombs" x 15kT ~ 1.5 Gigaton of TNT.

It was said many times that existing stockpile of nuclear weapon is enough to cause a Nuclear Winter. According to one of the recent models:

A global average surface cooling of –7C to –8C persists for years, and after a decade the cooling is still –4C (Fig. 2). Considering that the global average cooling at the depth of the last ice age 18,000 yr ago was about –5C, this would be a climate change unprecedented in speed and amplitude in the history of the human race. The temperature changes are largest over land ... Cooling of more than –20C occurs over large areas of North America and of more than –30C over much of Eurasia, including all agricultural regions.

No they are not, the total cost of the U.S. nuclear program from 1960 to 1996 was a whopping 30% of the military budget. That was an estimated 5.5 trillion dollars minimum. Not cost effective at all, and just consider the trillions more of cost of actually using them (even a one-sided nuclear war is hell on your stock portfolio, trust me) http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_atomic_audit.html

(I'm so advanced that I combined information from two sources to produce my summary.)

Gun-type plutonium bombs. NTI[*] and others seem to think the result would be limited to an extremely low order detonation at best. The US certainly intended to make them and gave up the idea during WW II. NTI uses the term "impossible." I often wondered why you couldn't just raise the velocity of the slug to a high enough value; after all, the gun only has to withstand a single firing! My guess is that the velocity required would be very challenging to create.

[*] http://www.nti.org/h_learnmore/nuctutorial/chapter02_05.html

"It is impossible to achieve a large nuclear explosion by using plutonium in a gun-type device because the spontaneous neutron release rate is higher and causes predetonation. Nonetheless, a plutonium gun-type bomb could release as much energy as a few tons of TNT, which could conceivably cause many casualties."

According to this it would cost about US$23 trillion to buy all residential real estate: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=493795

However, that includes land costs, so you may have a US$100K house on a million dollar piece of land. So the rebuilding cost is probably only, guessing, US$10 trillion?

Of course, that is only residential real estate. There is a suggestion there that all commercial real estate comes to around US$3.7 trillion. Again, some of that is probably land, so let's guess $2 trillion to rebuild, or adding the two, about US$12 trillion in costs to rebuild every building we have now.

The total cost listed here as a *minimum* is $5.8 trillion dollars through the mid 1990s: http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_atomic_audit.html

And as in my other reply, we can probably guess it is around US$7 trillion total now as a minimum. But it may be higher with hidden costs, including interest on the national debt and opportunity costs. What if that money had gone into medical research instead? Or robotics? Or green energy? Or biotech? Or what about all the social energy that has gone into prosesting against nuclear militarism and a MAD policy?

So, certainly, by that estimate, the US nuclear weapons program has cost more or less enough to rebuild everything once. As for rebuilding twice, in that nuclear cost, I'm not sure it includes interest on that money had it been invested. So, it may be a simple addition of all the costs, not any consideration of what it means to spend money way back then as far as returns on investment. Also, when I read that, it was probably twenty years ago, so the ratio may have been different.

Certainly the orders of magnitude are comparable, even if it depends on exact natures of the estimates.

Thanks for questioning this. I hope you look into it more for yourself. :-)

Obviously, then there is the cost of the roadways, industrial infrastructure, and contents of all that. So, the cost of rebuilding absolutely everything in the USA might be more. But, it is still ironic that the "insurance" against losing everything in the USA to the "communists" has been ... about the cost of everything in the USA. :-)

Oops, you are right, thanks for catching that. Poor choice of source there, even as the basic scale is right (since that is apparently for just one year, and they total the whole year at US$16.5 billion) and in my haste I though they were talking about the total costs and the ballpark was close. So, the total is going to be more like 100 time that.

From:
    http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_atomic_audit.html
"The amount spent through 1996--$5.5 trillion--was 29 percent of all military spending from 1940 through 1996 ($18.7 trillion)."

I've seen higher figures too (What about clean up costs? What about cancer costs? What about interest on those costs incurred as national debt? What about lots of other hidden costs? Etc.)

So, add another fourteen years on to that $5.5 trillion estimate (which may be low, and not include interest) and you'd probably get, say, seven trillion dollars for the total cost of the US. So, the cost to California, base on being 13% of the population, would then be about $900 billion for the total cost of the weapons program, not including interest on past expenses (or interest paid on military-related debt that was never funded by taxes).

So, US$900 billion is only about approaching half of the two trillion dollar figure I cited. So, I'm still in the ballpark, even as you were right to point out I missed several decimal points by a poor choice of data source which I misinterpreted as total costs, not one years cost -- I guess, luckily, my two mistakes just about cancelled out. :-) But I might have noticed it if the figure was not about what I remembered from other sources.

Glad someone around here is double checking calculations and posting about it. :-) Thanks again. Sorry about the sloppy math.

"The U.S. no longer has to worry about nuclear war? Probably. "

The USA is terrified right now that just one nuclear bomb will be used by someone in a US city. Because of that terror, the USA is willing to change its entire structure of civil liberties (like allow broad wiretapping without warrants). The terror of just one bomb. Why did we then build about 70,000 of them?
    http://www.brookings.edu/projects/archive/nucweapons/50.aspx
    http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_atomic_audit.html

So, US military policy about nuclear war has been wrong for fifty years. The cost of losing even one city is too big to imagine, too big to bear. So, we need a different way forward. We need a different vision of national security than unilateral dominance; we need a national security policy that is based on global mutual security.

As Einstein said, with the release of the power of the atom, everything has changed but our thinking. We need a "global mindshift":
    http://www.global-mindshift.org/discover/viewMeme.asp?resourceID=239

Taiwan has one too

They have their own PAC-2 class missiles and have also bought PAC-3s from the US.

It is a threat, but unless the torpedo is fired from the shore (as it could be in Iran if the carrier battle group approached the shore too closely), then it is likely that any submarine (and certainly most ships or aircraft) would be detected by the escorts and the combat air patrol long before they got close enough to deploy the weapon.

Ehrm...

Reportedly, during a Joint Task Force Exercise on December 6-16, 2005, with the USS Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group off the coast of Southern California, the Gotland managed to take several pictures of the Ronald Reagan from close quarters, indicating a "strike" on the aircraft carrier.[9] As Gotland's Lieutenant Commander Jan Westas says, the U.S. ASW forces "have had a very difficult time finding us."[8] To date, the exercises have been carried out in deep water. It is expected that exercises with the Gotland in coastal waters will prove even more challenging to U.S. ASW.[8]

http://www.nti.org/db/submarines/sweden/index.html

And then you spout that Mach 4.5 number?

The SA-2 has a maximum range of about 31 miles, a maximum operating altitude of 80,000 ft, and speed of Mach 3.5. It usually carried a high explosive warhead of 287 lbs, though nuclear versions are also known.


As for the SR-71, it's top speed has never been declassified, but assuming a top speed of 3.0, and a flight altitude of 100,000 feet, by the time the missile reaches that altitude, it only has a few miles of operating range left - easy enough to keep away from until it runs out of fuel a few seconds later.

And here's an example of what happens when you try.

The Bush administration has failed twice in military action: invade a country that has little point for the action, and leave a lunatic free to buy his bomb (and possibly sell that in black market). If US bombed the North Korea nuclear facilities in 2003, I have strong doubt whether NK can rebuild them (consider its isolation and weak industrial base). A lot of these facilities are modification to the original Soviet research reactor built in 1960s....
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/NK/index.ht ml

Of course, people would talk about the China factor as if China really wants to protect NK. Let's face it China has zero reason for a NK armed with nuke (as this triggers Japan, S Korea or even Taiwan to have nuke). The fact is China just does not want US Army to station right next to its border. It is the sort of communication that can be established before hand. For a surgical operation like the one in 1981 in Iraq (Israel bombed Iraq reactor), no one will really care. In fact, I don't think it is too late to do something like that now...

And you would trust the soviets to get rid of all their nukes? Could they have gotten rid of them?

Sure they could've gotten rid of them! Several US presidents and Congresses approved arms agreements with the USSR (though these weren't complete elimination of nukes) and they worked fairly well.

As to the claim that the USSR never did propose complete nuclear disarmament, they did. Offers were made in the 50s and the US -- which held a large advantage in nukes then -- used the excuse that a regime of inspections needed to be developed before the US would agree. The USSR, given the US aggression, spying, funding of dissidents (etc.), was leery of any inspection system.

But Gorbachev reversed the USSR's position on inspections. On "Jan 15, 1986 In an address to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Premier Gorbachev announces a plan for total nuclear disarmament of the superpowers by the year 2000." (Source) Like other Soviet proposals, the US found another excuse to kill that move toward nuclear disarmament.

Of course, the plutonium in breeder reactors is an inseparable mix of isotopes which cannot be made to work in a nuclear warhead.

a potential proliferating state or subnational group using designs and technologies no more sophisticated than those used in first-generation nuclear weapons could build a nuclear weapon from reactor-grade plutonium that would have an assured, reliable yield of one or a few kilotons (and a probable yield significantly higher than that).

Developed by Pivdenmash - see http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Ukraine/Mis sile/2164_3853.html

Although I generally dislike the French government, I have to give them kudos in this area for being the only government with the balls to continue civilian research in this area, when the US decided to ban it

I guess India India and China were also doing civilian research in fast breeder reactors.

Also i think India is only one which tried Thorium as a fuel. And she has quite a lot of it too...

The war in Iraq was authorized since Saddam didn't comply with several UN Security Council resolutions, the last and most pertinent one being 1441. What are you saying proved false later?

Summing it up: France and Russia were against an invasion, reasoning that the UN investigations showed there wasn't enough evidence to prove Iraq possesed WMD. France was threatening with a veto against a security council decision for an invasion (cue the freedom fries), then Bush said he would invade Iraq with or without allied support. Kofi Annan was in a difficult position. The UN wouldn't look good if the strongest country on earth defied it, so the vote typically passed in order to save the UN's image. I'm guessing this part must have been painted by the US media as: "the UN isn't powerfull enough to enforce international law" or something, because I see many comments on the net to such a point. The truth is that the US (and some of the members of the security council) delibrately undermine it to protect their interests. As time has taught us, France, Russia and the UN were wise in hesitating to authorize an invasion and in positioning themeselves against it. No WMD were found, showing that Saddam actually wasn't lying about his capabilities to the UN. Now, why was Bush right in invading after all? Also, why shouldn't Bush be overthrown? He is clearly dangerous with the military power he posseses. Please don't underestimate my intelligence by answering something lame like he was a dictator that was torturing his people. There are alot of worse dictators around the world, some very good allies to the US. Take a look at Pakistan. :(

I'm not sure what definition you're using of "WMD," but to the US Government, a chemical, biological, or nuclear weapon IS a weapon of mass destruction, period. Or rather, a 'weapon of mass destruction' is defined as a nuclear, chemical, or biological weapon.

This definition comes from the 1987 Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which you can read here. However the way it's described -- not as an explicit definition, but almost as an implicit assumption, suggests to me that the term was used in this way for a significant time prior to this. In the US Code, it also includes radiological, as well as Chem/Bio/Nuclear weapons. (USG uses of WMD.)

However, your point -- namely that there are some weapons which meet the USG criteria for being a "WMD," but probably are not capable of doing that much damage (depending on the type and method of use), is very true. However saying that they are "not a WMD" is a bit of a large statement, because the US Government disagrees with you, and at the end of the day, that's who people are going to listen to and that's the definition that's going to be widely used.

I think that if you want to discuss 'true' WMDs -- that is, weapons which have the capability of inflicting a large amount of damage or number of casualties -- you are better off using the term "mass casualty weapon" or something else, rather than the term "WMD."

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/368/1
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1718125.st m
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1862779.st m
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/jul2001/spac-j25 .shtml
http://www.nti.org/e_research/e3_44a.html
http://www.ciaonet.org/olj/fa/fa_mayjune01a.html
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/22/163821 2&tid=215
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/2 5/1356202&tid=160
http://slashdot.org/articles/04/12/16/1324209.shtm l?tid=126&tid=103
and in particular : http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/12/01/122620 7&mode=thread&tid=103&tid=126&tid=99&threshold=-1

just what i found with a little effort....

That missile better have some very sophisticated Atificial Intelligence and be on a registered flight pattern because we'll be trying to communicate with it if it isn't and before it even gets close we'd probably scramble jets before it crossed any of our borders if its not telling us with a human voice what it is. There aren't any non-military supersonic jets in service currently so a single supersonic object floating around will be very closely monitored.

Hey, that's a great idea! It would be fun to go "steaming" around the world in one of those. Where to find a crew though?
Also you could probably get some decent money in the scrap metal... or the nuclear part...
Some interesting info concerning the Northern Fleet:
http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/russia/naval/nucflt /norflt/norflovr.htm
Wiki for the lazy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Red_Banner_Nor thern_Fleet

They left out the address of AQ Khan, who runs a mailorder nukes biz in Pakistan. Just put an account# from Libya, Iran or North Korea, or maybe Saudi Arabia on your order, and you can get all the tutorial you need. You'll still have to get the fuel from somewhere, but there's plenty of Russian, Kazakh or even good ol' Italian mafia dealers. Try the Carlyle Group - they might be your one-stop-shop, including the negotiations that signal your initiation into the nuclear club.

They left out the address of AQ Khan, who runs a mailorder nukes biz in Pakistan. Just put an account# from Libya, Iran or North Korea, or maybe Saudi Arabia on your order, and you can get all the tutorial you need. You'll still have to get the fuel from somewhere, but there's plenty of Russian, Kazakh or even good ol' Italian mafia dealers. Try the Carlyle Group - they might be your one-stop-shop, including the negotiations that signal your initiation into the nuclear club.

The U.S. Space Command announced in November 2002 "a shift from the 'control' of space -- that was the Clinton doctrine -- to 'ownership' of space," he said. "The advance from control to ownership is a substantial one and in line with National Security Strategy and very ominous in its implications. Others plainly will not say, 'Ok, it's fine,'" Chomsky said.

Also check out this scary little number: September 2002 National Security Strategy of the U.S.A.

Rather, accourding to Title 18 of the United States Code, Part I, Chapter 113B, Section 2332 the definition is: (A) any destructive device as defined in section 921 of this title;

Yes, and section 921 says a "destructive device" is "any explosive, incendiary, or poison gas (i) bomb, (ii) grenade, (iii) rocket having a propellant charge of more than four ounces, (iv) missile having a propellant charge of more than one quarter ounce, (v) mine, or (vi) mine or device similar to any of the devices described in the preceding clauses."

An al Samoud rocket has a propellant charge of 825 kg, a lot more than four ounces, and if armed with explosives therefore fits the definition of a "destructive device" under Section 921, which means it is therefore a WMD, under the law you quoted.

Thanks for helping prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Iraq had WMD, according to U.S. law. Cheers!

http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Russia/
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/USA/

http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/nukenotes/mj03nu kenote.html

The US is working to reduce the amount of nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Your post implies otherwise. I hope the above links help clear up any confusion or misconceptions about US policy that you may have.

http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/Russia/
http://www.nti.org/e_research/profiles/USA/

http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/nukenotes/mj03nu kenote.html

The US is working to reduce the amount of nuclear weapons in its arsenal. Your post implies otherwise. I hope the above links help clear up any confusion or misconceptions about US policy that you may have.

..rather interesting to see the most highly-rated comments on /. are those who deride the Indian space programme and yelp about the poverty and the living conditions, and expound the wealth of their knowledge about how this 88 mil could be used towards creating more hospitals and so on.

How many of you know about India's space programmes though?

Did you know that India has been working on space programmes since the 60's?

Or that it had a comprehensive space progamme, that included a satellite system, a remote sensing satellite system, polar satellite launch vehicle and Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle ?

Or that when United States arm-twisted Russia in April 1992 and July 1993 not to sell the cryogenic technology know-how to India.

Or that India's cryogenic engine came of age on April 18, 2001 when India bustled into the exclusive GSL club?

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